The test platform we use for hard drive testing utilizes GIGABYTE's G1. Assassin 2 (X79) motherboard, and recently, it's developed a problem there it takes longer to boot than before. Because we do boot-time tests for our HDD content, this is obviously a problem. As of our last HDD review, things have been fine, but with our latest, taking a look at Seagate's budget 4TB, things have slowed considerably.

Hardware inside the machine is 1:1 with our last test. I reflashed the BIOS, and even tried using the second BIOS. Both POST and the actual Windows boot time itself now take longer.

To help put this into perspective, the Seagate ES.3 4TB used to cold boot in 54 seconds, and Windows Logo > Desktop boot in 22 seconds. Now, those figures are 1m 20s and 36s, respectively.

Our machine configuration has never changed. The -only- setting we ever change in the BIOS is the BCLK modifer, and possibly boot order if it's required. Aside from that, nada. No additional hardware is installed in the machine (though an Intel NIC card is there usually, but removed for this test since the previous results didn't include it), so I'm at a loss.

Do you have any idea why the mobo would slow down like that? I am going to test an alternate port soon (SATA 3Gbit/s ones) and see if that helps, but I highly doubt it. It's pretty frustrating especially since it appears that I'll just need to drop that entire test result from the review until I can replace our test machine.

maybe too simple but does the system look for any other boot devices or is there a problem with another connected USB or DVD drive? Or did you change the memory check on boot? otherwise its really "strange"... :-/

Personally I think it has to do with the drives themselves. When my Seagate drives were starting to die my POST times were about twice as long as they had been and the boot to windows logo from POST and subsequently from logo to login screen were all longer.

After replacing the drives all the times were reduced.

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maybe too simple but does the system look for any other boot devices or is there a problem with another connected USB or DVD drive? Or did you change the memory check on boot? otherwise its really "strange"... :-/

Not that I could ever see. I'm going to replace the board soon nonetheless because it's just crapping itself out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by madmat

Personally I think it has to do with the drives themselves. When my Seagate drives were starting to die my POST times were about twice as long as they had been and the boot to windows logo from POST and subsequently from logo to login screen were all longer.